The Provincials

"The Provincials" proved to be especially meaningful to me. First, my wife gave it to me for our anniversary; I am researching the Jewish Confederacy, and I had included it on my reading list. Second, we went to Vicksburg, Miss., for our anniversary, and I began reading the book there. I have family roots in Vicksburg, where we met a number of wonderful people at the synagogue who knew my cousin, a World War II veteran who grew up in Vicksburg but now lives in Texas.My wife and I also toured the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, which is very close to Vicksburg.Putting everything together, including our visit to the Jewish cemetery in Vicksburg, I feel I now understand "the Southern Jewish experience." Eli Evans tied a lot of loose ends for me and helped put a lot of things in perspective. (I plan to view "Driving Miss Daisy" again,this time with new appreciation and understanding.)And I might add, I found this book very easy to read. Since I'm generally reading two or three books at the same time (well, you know what I mean), I had planned to spend three weeks reading "The Provincials." I finished it in a week and was sorry when it was over.

I share many of Bonita Davis's good feelings about this book. It is a great collection of stories about Jews throughout the South and throughout much of American history. I particularly enjoyed the insights into the schism between the early-arrived German Jews and the later-arrived Eastern European Jews. In any case, the book is well written, but not as easy to read as his Judah P. Benjamin biography.

To say that you are a southern Jew may sound like a contradiction in terms. After all, Jewish culture and life is demoniated by the historic enclaves of the urban north. Eli Evans' book, The Provencials breaks that stereotype by telling the story of the south's Jewish population whose very presence made an impact on a region that is so misunderstood by its northern cousins. Evans describes for us the challenges and triumphs of growing up Jewish in a southern culture. Like their southern gentile counterparts Jews in the south share a deep rooted southern soul and culture which embeds itself into one's psyche. Although the south harbors within it painful memories for Jews ( Leo Frank lynching of 1915), overall the community managed to survive and thrive. Jewish communities in many instances took on the same cultural charistics of the southern gentile but there was always that sense of being the outsider that made the community a distinct entity. Evans skillfully weaves his own autobiography of growing up Jewish in the Bible Belt with the stories of the regions' people and various events that impacted upon the Jewish community. I throughly enjoyed reading about the peddlers who went throughout the rural south bringing with them not only merchandise but news from the larger communities. The book shows the struggles Jews had in building communities, establishing synagogues, and balancing the racial tensions of the majority culture. This book is a must read for those unfamiliar with the Jewish presence in the south.